Tag Archives: Fundamentalism

From Fundamentalism to Catholicism

07 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith

≈ 8 Comments

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Hello everyone! Jessica has been kind enough to allow me to post on this blog, which I am excited to do. I’ve been enjoying reading her posts, as well as others here on a regular basis.

That’s not just me being pleasant. The site has pulled me back to it a number of times and has given me a lot of food for thought.

I wanted to share a little bit about my own faith background in my first post here (and would love to read any of yours). I am a convert to the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). My wife and I, along with our children, converted around the time Pope Francis became pope.

I grew up what you might call a Fundamentalist, though we never labeled ourselves anything. “Nondenominational” or “Baptist” might be a better description, actually. I don’t know for sure.

Whatever I was, though, I grew up in an environment that had no warm feelings for the RCC. A few misconceptions I had included the following.

1. The pope was probably the anti-Christ (or would be in league with him whenever he showed up).

2. Roman Catholics worshiped Mary. Worship of her echoes the worship of some goddess in ancient Egypt.

3. Everything written in Chick Tracts about Roman Catholics.

I ended up falling in love with and marrying a young woman who grew up Anglican, which is a bit ironic. I was as clueless about Anglicanism as I was about Roman Catholicism. I somehow missed the memo that, as she put it later, Anglicans are basically Roman Catholics, just without the pope.

When we got married, she followed me into the nondenominational, happy-clappy church I was a part of, trying to be the dutiful wife. But secretly, she missed the smells and bells of liturgical life.

The Eucharist also meant a great deal to her, which I did not understand at the time. After one of our church services, she was shocked and horrified when a friend of ours took some left over bread we had used for communion (which we considered entirely symbolic), and used it as a snack afterwards, dipping it and chewing right in front of her.

On another front, my sister and brother-in-law shocked us by leaving their nondenominational (gosh, that’s a long word) church to join the RCC. My brother-in-law had spent ten years flirting off and on with the idea of converting. Finally he did, and it was like a nuclear bomb went off in our extended family.

So many nights, all of us were up late debating Mary, the Eucharist, the pope, everything. I was not as vehement with him as others in our tribe, but I did take it upon myself to convince him he was wrong. Anybody who understood the Bible could not possibly become Roman Catholic, right?

Well, as I did my own research, visiting sites like Catholic Answers and especially delving into articles on Called to Communion, I found, to my surprise, that Roman Catholics actually do read the Bible – very much so. They had very good reasons not to believe in Sola Scriptura and to view the Gospel differently than I did.

What really threw me across the Tiber, though, was the idea that to remain a protestant, I had to believe that God abandoned his church for 1500 years until Martin Luther came along. The more I thought about this, the more it unsettled me.

Imagine the priests, theologians, and saints coming together for Ecumenical Councils through the ages, seeking to know the Holy Spirit’s mind on issues of Christology, the Bible, icons, and all sorts of other issues that were rending the church in two. The Apostle James says that if we ask for wisdom, the Holy Spirit will give it to us. Am I to believe these holy men, and by extension the church that relied on their teaching, were abandoned by God in their hour of direst need?

That was too much. It took an unbelievable amount of hubris on my part to think that fervent, praying Christians for the first millennia and a half got it wrong while we “modern” Christians for some reason managed to get it right.

It came down to Easter Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism in the end. I would go into what made us veer west, but I think I have gone on long enough for one post.

At any rate, that is my story. Again, thank you for allowing me to write here. I look forward to continuing to read what everyone else posts!

Images and Catholicity

18 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by in Anti Catholic, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith

≈ 91 Comments

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queen-mother

One of the most common charges against Catholic-minded Christians concerns imagery, and one of the most contested areas is one where, if we heeded the message of Christ, we should be most united – because it concerns the Blessed Virgin Mary.

My thoughts here are prompted by yet another long screed from the long-time commentator here, Bosco. There are those, I know, who would say “ignore him,” but that is not, I think a good way. Those same voices will say “but you have made these points before and he will take no notice.” They may be right, but then others may read and they may take notice. The job of the sower is to cast the seed. If it is good seed it will take root in the right soil.

So let us begin with what Bosco says here:

hi good brother. i dont understand. the biblical accounts i mentioned are there for all to see. maybe its the conclusions i draw that you say are wrong.
i maintain that catholic imagery gives false impressions and that catholics have fallen prey to them. yourself included. for instance….the panting of supposed mary holding a baby supposed to be jesus, not even old enough to talk. in the picture they both are wearing big fat gold crowns. there are also graven images of the same with both wearing big gold crowns. this leads people to think they were on top of things right after the birth. but the scriptures dont support this idea. why did mary reprimand jesus for staying behind if he is the king and she is the queen. kings do what they want.

 

When Jesus says he is “the living water,” I am sure that Bosco does not suppose that He is saying that He is made out of water; Jesus is using an image to help us understand. The Church does the same. If we take the images to which Bosco refers, they are aids to understanding. There is the world of difference between, for example, the cherubim and seraphim on the Ark of the Covenant (aids to worship) and the Golden Calf (an object of worship). I am sure Bosco knows this difference, so it is unclear why he persists in a literal reading. It may be that to him kings are “on top of things right after the birth,” but if he were to pause for a moment, two things might become clear. There has never been a moment in history when a king has been “on top of things right after the birth,” and the crowns are an image to help our worship.

What is being symbolised here is the Kingship of Christ. I am sure that Bosco acknowledges Christ is King, so what more natural than an image of Him crowned? His mother is the mother of the King, and as such, is also worthy of a crown. She is also the crown of our race as the handmaiden of the Lord through whom salvation was born into the world. The imagery is clear and an aid to worship.

The critics of Bosco are right, these things have been pointed out to him before. But for Bosco, and others, there is one way, their way, of looking at things, and all other ways are wrong, facts and arguments which are not congruent to that view are ignored. Bosco will not engage with the argument advanced here, which raises the question of his purpose?

heres something else you can claim is false….mary never interacted with jesus ministry after he left home. there is no account of her traveling with him or cooking for the guys or helping him preach or anything. the closest she came was standing outside a house where he was, calling for him, and he didnt even come out to see her. some big queen of heaven. absentee queen. not one word from her.only time she saw him was at the crucifixion, and even then no words of hers were recorded. even at pentacost, no wise words from the all powerful queen of heaven and earth were recorded.

The idea that Our Lady “never interacted with Jesus’ ministry is tenable on only the narrowest reading of what one imagines that Ministry to have been. Without Our Lady’s “yes” to God’s will, there would have been no ministry. In the Magnificat we see the central themes of that Ministry highlighted, as we do in the words of the Song of Symeon. The first miracle sees Our Lady modelling the perfect Christian response to the words of Christ – “do as He tells you.” She is there at the foot of the Cross. Christ’s last earthly command is to have St John care for his beloved mother. It is a sadly impoverished view of Ministry that relegates Our Lady to having no part in it.

you still maintain that im not born again and am usually wrong in my opinions. i go by what is written in scripture while your religion is based on things not in scripture. not only are they not in scripture, they contradict scripture.

There is, as ever, the trope that “I go by scripture” without any acknolwedgement of what Scripture is. The Blessed Apostles show no signs of calling their own work “scripture” and yet the Church, of which they were part and which their Lord founded, recognised it as such. Sciptural fundamentalism is again, a sadly diminished view of what the Apostles did and one of the purposes of the Church which Christ founded.

Then, sadly and predictably, there is the attack on intercessory prayer.

catholic literature vacillates back and forth on some subjects. i read were its good to ask mary to send jesus a prayer request, and i read where you have to go thru mary to get a prayer thru to jesus. the majority says you cant get thru to jesus, that you have to go thru mary. louis de montfort says one can only get to jesus thru mary. i “talk” to catholics in other sites, and it seems to be a 50 50 split on this. half pray to jesus most of the time and half only pray to mary. its not funny anymore when your whole prayer life is wasted praying to nothing. salvation comes from asking jesus to come into your life. if one dies expecting this queen of heaven to save them at the hour of their death, well, their fate is sealed. the reason you or I are here is to work out salvation.mary is fine, but she didnt die for my sins.

I am sure that Bosco has access to a book where the following words appear: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (St James 5:16) These words of St Paul’swould also suggest that intercessory prayer is expected of us:

18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19 and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

Then, of course, there is Jesus Himself, who tells us “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

When we pray to Our Lady, or the Saints, it is asking them to intercede for us before the Throne of God. It is an act of humility and piety.

Now, these things have been explained to our brother Bosco many times, but usually only in the replies to his comments. If he cares to respond to the arguments made here, I guarantee him a hearing. if he simply wishes to restate exploded myths, then he must find someone with greater patience.